“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

“Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed – because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays.”

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

“when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.”